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Green side up. Some plants look good floating. Amazon swords
are not one of them.

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Impressive Amazon sword. Use the three adult neons and banana plant for size comparison.

Origins:Oddly enough, Amazon sword plants originally came from the Amazon River.These days they come mostly
from Florida and Fareast plant farms.Florida
farms produce bare root as well as potted swords.The Fareast farms send us only bare root specimens because of U.S.
import regulations.High air
freight rates also make bare root stock more practical.

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Here's a pack of 50 bare-root very small Amazon swords.

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Amazon swords grow leafier with age.

Many Varieties:You’ll
find several types of sword plants under the “Amazon” label.You’ll even find different species called Amazon swords.Certain farms produce their own particular strains.Others cross different species to come up with hybrids under the
same rubric.

Starting Suggestion:Strip
any damaged leaves off your new swords.Snip off any non-white roots.And
snip the tips off any healthy roots. All these nips and snips
encourage new growth.

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Amazon sword babies on mother plant.

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Sometimes they produce one baby sword.

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Some times several.

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Here's several harvested bloomstalks.

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We trimmed out the unneeded parts.

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Here they're planted in a 10 with b-b size gravel.

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Here's two Amazon swords with two crowns ready to be split. Crummy
roots.

Reproduction:Amazon
swords usually reproduce by root division and by seed.Root division keeps the strain pure.Seeds produce the hybrids and the largest “litters.”Root division works best in your aquarium.Most sword keepers never see an adult sword plant bloom and produce
seeds.Many Fareast plant
farms use microbiology to turn out acres of identical sword plants.Do not attempt this at home.

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You can't do this in real life. This Amazon sword was entered in a
contest.

Substrate:Swords grow
best in smaller grained substrates about the size of a b-b.Adding clay to the substrate helps a lot.Mixing in large quantities of vermiculite helps even more.Some growers add soil.We
think soil’s way too messy to use.

Fertilizers:The
laterite products on the market were developed specifically to help you
grow sword plants.Swords also
respond very well to leaf fertilizers and even better to root fertilizers.Avoid over fertilizing them.

Lighting:If you’re
serious about your swords, put a timer on your tank and give them exactly
12 hours of good light.Deep
tanks require more bulbs than shallow tanks.Swords respond well to nearly any good light source.

Other Threats:Plecos
skin their leaves and make them look like lace plants.Silver dollars eat them down to their roots.So will Colombian ramshorn snails and apple snails.Big cichlids like to uproot them.Keep turtles and crayfish out of any plant tank.

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Impressive Amazon sword in a 70-gallon tank. They will grow larger.

Size:Most tank-raised
Amazon swords grow 12 to18-inches tall.Oddly
enough, too much light keeps them from growing tall.They flatten out. On the
other hand, we’ve seen these plant grow up and out of a 70-gallon
tank under hanging lights.These
big momma plants grow flowers and make lots and lots of little baby
swordlets.

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Amazon sword starter as sold in retail stores.

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Retail tank full of young Amazon sword plants. Give them more room
to grow.

Great Egg Site:If you
keep breeder size angels, you’ll notice your angels prefer to spawn on
Amazon sword plant leaves.They’re
both from the same river. Angels can wreck their leaves when
spawning.